the 9th century Traces under the fieldsStopy pod poľami

Two places in Štrba's land, Šoldov and Hrachovisko, have yielded traces of settlement dated to the Great Moravian period — the nineth-century Slav state whose centres were Nitra and Moravia. That is a fact about potsherds and postholes, not about a village: nobody can say who lived here, how many of them there were, or for how long. What it does tell a reader is that this high saddle was not empty ground waiting to be discovered four hundred years later. People were already using it, and they were using it for the same reason everyone since has — because the way between two valleys goes through here.Na dvoch miestach v štrbskom chotári — na Šoldove a na Hrachovisku — sa našli stopy osídlenia datované do veľkomoravského obdobia, teda do 9. storočia, keď mala slovanská ríša strediská v Nitre a na Morave. Je to však údaj o črepoch a jamách po koloch, nie o dedine: nikto nepovie, kto tu žil, koľko ich bolo ani ako dlho tu vydržali. Hovorí to len toľko, že vysoké sedlo nebolo prázdnou pláňou, ktorú o štyristo rokov niekto objavil. Ľudia ho používali už vtedy — a z toho istého dôvodu ako všetci po nich: cesta z jednej doliny do druhej vedie práve tadiaľto.